Sealskin
by Sharkbait
Summary: What the sea will take, the sea must have. [Part II of the Red Riding series]


TITLE: Sealskin

AUTHOR: Sharkbait

RATING: PG-13 for disturbing content, violence, and creepy attachments

SERIES: Red Riding

CHARACTERS: Barbara Gordon, the Joker, Jim Gordon, Batman, and others as they appear

CONTINUITY: Pre-TDK through to pre-TDKR

DISCLAIMER: All characters belong to various people and groups (DC Comics, Warner Bros., Christopher Nolan, Bob Kane, etc.) who I'm not. In case there was any confusion.

NOTE: Sequel to 'Robin Red Breast'.

* * *

When she's six, she punches this boy at recess for picking on a girl in a wheelchair. She doesn't do it because Alejandra's in a wheelchair; she hits him because Alejandra's nice and she knows all about birds, and she's so shy, she never bothers anybody. There's no reason to be mean to her, and it makes her so mad when Michael B. is.

And he is - - a lot. She tells Mrs. Kirby, the recess monitor, and she makes him quit a few times. But eventually she just tells her, "Why don't you keep an eye on Barbara for now, and let Michael worry about Michael."

Which doesn't even make sense. Obviously Michael B. isn't worried about anything, and what's keeping an eye on herself going to do? _She_ isn't calling Alejandra names.

She's pretty sure Mrs. Kirby really means that she's a tattletale. She's also pretty sure Mrs. Kirby is just sick of dealing with Michael B., and doesn't want to do it anymore.

But somebody has to do something.

Michael B. makes Alejandra cry one day when he spits on her and calls her an ugly lesbo cripple, and Babs decides maybe 'somebody' could be her.

So she balls up a fist and smashes it right into his stupid mean face.

Mrs. Kirby isn't happy. Neither is Father Lee, the principal.

Babs waits in the hall outside Father Lee's office while he calls her parents. Mom is working late tonight, so it's just Dad who comes. He sits across from Father Lee, next to her, and they both listen while he talks about zero tolerance. That means something is never okay. But Michael B. isn't here for what he said and did to Alejandra. She frowns at the floor, and tries to imagine how that could ever be okay.

Grown-ups don't make sense sometimes.

It's a quiet walk to the car. Dad helps her buckle her seatbelt, then looks at her so long, her stomach scrunches up. "Babs, you can't go around hitting people just because they do something bad."

"I'm sorry," she says, even if she isn't really sorry about punching Michael B. She's sorry she upset her dad, and she's sorry about getting in trouble.

Dad's face is serious, but his eyes twinkle behind his glasses, and his mustache twitches like when he smiles. "You picked a pretty good exception to the rule, though."

He carefully forgets to tell Mom, but she sees her scraped knuckles and knows anyway. She raises an eyebrow. "That Banaszek kid?" she asks, and Babs nods. "Thought so. I'd have knocked his rotten little block off, too," and then she kisses her on the forehead. "Well, don't make a habit of it. And keep away from the teeth, they're sharp."

The next time Michael B. starts to pick on Alejandra, Babs walks right over. He's still got a fat lip. "You want another one?" she says, and holds her fist up.

He runs away. He calls her a bad word, but he runs away.

She wasn't really going to hit him again.

But it was okay if he didn't know that.

o o o

Mrs. Johnson is a nice teacher, and she likes the kids at her table, but first grade is boring. They're just learning how to count to one hundred! She could do that forever ago.

Jimmy's homework is a lot more interesting. They get to add and subtract, multiply and divide - - there's even these things called fractions, which is like cutting a pizza into slices except you can keep going smaller and smaller forever. Imagine a hundred slices! Imagine a million! You could do that with fractions.

That's so much cooler than stupid counting.

Babs knows stealing is wrong, but maybe it'd be okay to borrow one of his worksheets. Just once. She sneaks one out of his red math folder, and takes it to their shared room to work on. He's outside playing street hockey with the Delgado brothers, so she doesn't have to worry (too much) that he'll catch her.

The problems are hard, but it's fun working them out. You follow the rules, and numbers do what they're supposed to. It's magic.

She's so busy puzzling out the fractions (one and a half apples plus half an apple is...) that she doesn't hear any footsteps or the door open. "What are you doing?" Jimmy asks behind her.

Oops. She thinks about lying, but that's wrong, too, and he wouldn't believe her anyhow. "Your math homework."

"You aren't supposed to touch my stuff, twerp! I'm telling Mom," but he's reading the worksheet over her shoulder. "One-third of twelve is...four? Is that right?"

"Yeah," Babs writes out carefully under question twelve: two apples.

Jimmy sits on the bed next to her. "How'd you figure that out?"

She shrugs, thumps her eraser against her chin. 52 + 7 + 13 is... "I don't know. I saw the numbers in my head, and then I took them apart into three pieces."

"You're so weird," Jimmy says, brotherly disdain with a little admiration. He watches her put down '72', then shakes his head. "Jeez, you can't just write the answer, dummy. Mr. Lopez says we have to show our work."

Babs blinks up at him. The numbers just went together. She didn't know, and then she knew. That's all the work there was. "How do I do that?"

Jimmy sighs, and grabs a pencil, too. "Here, let me show you..."

She gets him 100% and a Pikachu sticker for that worksheet. The next one, too. They get caught on the third try. Jimmy has to help clean all the chalkboard erasers after school for a week, but Mr. Lopez talks to Mrs. Johnson, and suddenly she has third grade worksheets of her very own. "If you have any questions, Barbara, you can always ask me," Mrs. Johnson says. The way she looks at her is different now. She doesn't call on her in class much anymore, but they talk a lot after.

She gets her a math book just like Jimmy's from the library, and wants her to try reading some big kid books next. No pictures or anything!

"Thank you, Mrs. Johnson," Babs has to remember to be polite. It's easy to forget when she's this excited. A whole book of math problems, all for her! She can't wait to get started on the car ride home.

She's onto fourth grade worksheets by March.

o o o

Babs is a nerd. She's known that for awhile, but the first time it actually matters is when Emily W. and Madison won't come to her eighth birthday party. "Uh, why would we?" Madison tosses her shiny hair over her shoulder. Her mom lets her flat-iron it and get highlights. "You think you're all smart and stuff, but you're just a nerd."

Her face goes hot and red. She'd like to punch Madison like she did Michael B., but she knows she can't. Mom always tells her: fight smarter, not harder. "Nerd means smart. You have to be smart to be a nerd," even though she's really mad, her voice comes out flat and calm. "But I guess you don't know a lot about being either one."

Madison's mouth flops open, and that's when Babs turns around and walks back to her desk. Sometimes you have to know when to stop. "I'll come," Alejandra says. "I think it's cool you're smart."

So Alejandra comes, and Emily H. and Mackenzie and Olivia, too. They go see Aladdin at a theater downtown that plays old movies, then have pizza and ice cream cake.

Dad has to work. He's at work most of the time right now. A really bad guy has hurt a lot of people, and Dad is the one who's supposed to catch him. It's hard, though - - this bad guy's smart and sneaky, and there's still a lot of dirty cops who help people like him. That's why Kayla and Jacob can't come over anymore; they had to move away because their dad was dirty and Batman helped put him in jail.

It's a good birthday, even if Madison was a jerk and her dad couldn't be there and Jimmy started getting another scratchy throat. "It's strep again," Mom tells Dad on the phone late that night, sitting on Jimmy's bed and talking really quietly because she thinks both of them are asleep. "Yeah, I know it's the third time this year. I'll bring him along to the hospital tomorrow, but we need to make an appointment with Dr. Han to check his tonsils, and he'll probably want to culture the rest of us just in case. No, I know you're busy. Jim, I know. Well, I'll just do the culture when you get home, then. You're still coming home occasionally, right?"

On Monday, Jimmy is too sick, so he doesn't go to school. She gets his homework folder from Mrs. Schuyler, and puts it in the new pink Little Mermaid backpack Grandma Finnerty gave her. If he's feeling okay enough, maybe she'll help him with the tough problems, and then they can read that chapter of _Maniac McGee_ together he's supposed to write a journal entry for.

It's raining outside. It was raining Friday, too, and she and Jimmy had to stand in it for half an hour because Dad was late picking them up. His job is important, so she tries not to complain, but it was really wet and cold.

Today's not so bad. There's a policeman already waiting for her, even if he's a little weird. She checks his badge like Dad showed her, and asks for the password. She does everything she's supposed to.

Sometimes doing what you're supposed to isn't enough.

Sometimes bad things still happen to you anyway.

o o o

He says his name is Officer Joe. He takes her for a milkshake.

After that, she doesn't really remember what happens, no matter how many police officers ask her or how many times they ask.

And it's a lot.

o o o

At the hospital, a nurse named Shonda and a policewoman she doesn't know take pictures of her in just her underwear, and then with no clothes at all. It's cold and it's embarrassing, and she wishes her mom was allowed to be in here, but she had to wait outside with Dad.

This is all because of the drawing on her stomach.

They want to know how it got there. She does, too. Did she draw it and forget somehow? Did...did Officer Joe? It makes her feel embarrassed again, makes her cheeks get hot and her eyes sting. People shouldn't touch you under your clothes, especially strangers. She doesn't want to think about him doing that to her.

A doctor comes in who has dark hair like Alejandra and wrinkles when she smiles. Her name tag says Dr. Inez Alvaro. She has her climb up onto a big metal exam table with a bright light at the end, and put a blanket with pink polka dots over her lap.

Shonda gives her a teddy bear to hold. "You just squeeze all the bad feelings into her, baby. You squeeze her real tight, okay?"

She tries.

Afterward, they tell her how brave she was. She doesn't feel brave, though. She feels small and scared, and her face hurts from crying.

Dr. Alvaro talks to her parents outside. Quietly, but she can hear the murmuring, Mom's voice a little louder, relieved. She comes in after that, and her smile is wobbly, but she isn't crying as much anymore. "Come on, honey," Mom pushes her hair back from her face, kisses her forehead. "Let's take you home."

Babs doesn't say anything. She just squeezes the teddy bear as tight as she can.

o o o

Dad takes her to work with him in the morning. He parks the car and shuts it off, then doesn't move. She watches him while they sit. "Some people are going to ask you questions today, Babs," he says finally, softly. "Do you understand?"

They want to know about Officer Joe. She nods, stares at her shoes. They took her purple rain boots yesterday. They took Grandpa Gordon's sweater and her Hello Kitty shirt and her new backpack, too.

Dad rests his hand on her head. Mom gave her a bath last night like she was little, but there's still pink marks left on her stomach where the paint was. "It's okay if it's hard for you to talk about what happened. You just answer the best you can, and remember that no matter what, you're not in any trouble," he smooths her hair one last time, and smiles. His eyes are red. "It's going to be all right, sweetheart. I promise."

Two days later, Dad gets shot.

Nothing is all right after that. Not for a long, long while.

o o o

It's the worst time in her life, in her mom and dad and brother's lives, too. It's the worst time for everybody who lives in Gotham.

Batman saves them. Harvey Dent takes them and puts a gun to Jimmy's head, but he saves them. Now the whole city hates him.

It isn't fair. She wants to yell at them all: he's not bad, he's a hero. He's the very best hero, and her brother would have _died_ if he hadn't been there. But they can't ever tell anyone what really happened. Dad made them promise. Lots of people would get hurt if anybody found out, he said. And she trusts her dad.

But it's hard. It's so, so hard.

Babs dreams about a lot of things now, Officer Joe and her dad dying and Harvey Dent's burnt face, but sometimes she dreams about Batman, too. She sees him like he looked, tall and strong in the darkness like the statue of Saint Michael at church, like something she didn't even know could be real. She dreams of him, and wakes up with her heart pounding and a feeling in her stomach like she's falling.

She carries that picture with her inside all the time. When she has to change schools in the middle of the year and doesn't see her friends anymore and listens to her parents argue every night, she holds onto it.

Someday she wants to be strong like that. Like a hero.


End file.
